#Stacks tnt closes series
#Stacks tnt closes tv

W_ extU$, and that is before you account for contamination by fission byproducts, melted concrete, and melted steel.ДЇusion is the only way that weapons engineers have been able to create megaton-scale explosions. If we assume that the core material is an incompressible solid with essentially constant density, then Using exergy, the upper bound on the amount of work which could be extracted from the hot core is

The exergy calculation will tell us how much energy an ideal (reversible) process could extract from the core, and we know from the Second Law of Thermodynamics that any real process (such as the steam explosion) must extract less. We can therefore calculate the maximum work which could conceivably be extracted from the hot core (using exergy) and use this as an upper bound on the amount of energy that could be released in a steam explosion.

The real energy reservoir was the partially-melted core the water wasn't dangerous because it held energy, but rather because it had the potential to act as a heat engine and convert the thermal energy in the core into work. In my view the water isn't really the thing to focus on here. Best case scenario, I guess we could assume normal atmospheric boiling point (100вЊ)? There were hundreds of tons of core material at temperatures near 1200вЊ, so worst case scenario you could assume all the steam becomes that temperature as the materials mix. I don't know what to assume the temperature of the steam is. I know a lot of it hinges on unknowns and the dynamics of the structures and materials involved, so I can simplify it to a constrained physics question:ДЄssuming 7,000 cubic meters of water instantly flashes to steam, how much potential energy is momentarily stored in that volume of steam occupying the same volume as the water did? Other sources vary wildly, some repeating the 'megatons' idea, and others saying it would've ' level 200 square kilometers'. I'm pretty sure this is absurd and impossible. When the lava of the melted core hit it, it would cause an enormous steam explosion.ДЇinally, my question: About how large would this explosion have been? The character in the show says '2-4 megatons' (of TNT equivalent, I assume). If anyone has a real figure, I'd love to hear).

#Stacks tnt closes tv

But at this point the decay heat and remaining fission reaction kept the core at more than 1200вЊ, causing it to melt through the concrete floors below the reactor.ДЄnd below the reactor were water tanks which contained 7,000 cubic meters of water (according to the TV show. This occurred after the initial explosion that destroyed the reactor, and after the fire in the core had been put out.

#Stacks tnt closes series

So the second episode of the HBO series began to cover the risk of a steam explosion that led to them sending three divers into the water below the reactor to drain the tanks.